Drudge Hollywood: DreamWorks' Arsenio Dropped

The Drudge Report has learned that ABC and DreamWorks have reached an agreement to "settle out" financially the 13-show order of Arsenio Hall's sitcom, Arsenio - halting production after the completion of just 7 episodes.

The feeling among everyone involved with the show is that the David Rosenthal-created premise - on-air announcer for an all-sports cable network in Atlanta lives with beautiful attorney-bride - was not a vehicle that was heading anywhere for Hall.

The yank comes as a spank to DreamWorks' troubled TV unit. ABC Entertainment president Jamie Tarses moved into full panic-slash-bailout mode as ratings and enthusiasm eroded.

DreamWorks will "retool" a show for Hall over the summer. However, there is industry speculation that Hall may not be right for the sitcom format. Throughout the Arsenio run, Hall remained unable to memorize the 45 pages of dialog required each week. The struggle to remember his next line was the main obstacle to getting anything funny on camera, explains a studio source. "It was painful."

On the production end, the plan is to get Friday's episode in the can before officially notifying actors & crew. But word of the pull had already reached beyond corporate halls late Wednesday night.

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MSNBC rolls out US$65 million "cyberstudio"

NBC News president Andrew Lack showed off his new $65 million MSNBC broadcast studio to other channels and print press Wednesday afternoon. The studio, located in Secaucus, New Jersey, and which coincidentally looks like a Heaven's Gate wet dream, will formally go into operation next week [7 April] when MSNBC leaves Fort Lee and the station gets rebirthed [a second launching of sorts].

The new 115,000-square-foot headquarters is "the next step in the implementation of our shared vision of how to change the way news is delivered," said Lack. "Sometime in the future, personal computers and television will merge. We have put a stake in the ground. This is a medium we want to own."

Reporters, writers, and producers will work side by side with online crews with a shared goal of breaking news simultaneously in HTML and TV code.

There are smokestack industry motifs clashing with floor-to-ceiling digital effects in a mix of human and Hal. Clocks displaying the time in different parts of the world line a wall. New York, London, Moscow, Tokyo, Tel Aviv, and Redmond. [Gates humor.]

Footnote: This SOS arrived in the Drudge Report email on Wednesday from a producer who works at a cable/dish/Web news channel:

"I'm in cult fall-out hell. Personally, I think I'm in a cult - the Cult of XXXX [anchorman] - where we all worship the little black box that beams messages, we cover the stories we're assigned, no matter whether they're relevant or not, and we are all tied to our computers...."

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Fowler's CIA shakedown?

April is the cruelest month, the bards say. An internal memo warning then CIA director John M. Deutch that Donald Fowler, former Democratic National Committee chairman, had improperly contacted the CIA on behalf of a major campaign contributor is at the root of a new investigation, reports the Thursday edition of The Los Angeles Times.

At issue is Fowler's assistance to Roger Tamraz, a Lebanese-American entrepreneur, who was seeking US support in his multibillion-dollar pipeline from Caspian to Turkey. Tamraz wanted access to President Clinton but had been flagged by the National Security Council due to a shadowy past in the Middle East.

The December 1995 memo warning of Fowler's allegedly improper contacts with the CIA was signed by William Lofgren, then the chief of the central Eurasian division, its clandestine espionage arm.

As explored in this space earlier this year, Hill investigators are convinced that Fowler will end up being involved with key fund-rasing irregularities. What's new on Thursday is that now Fowler also finds himself the focus of an investigation into alleged efforts to exploit the CIA for political purposes.

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(((Money wheel))) The Drudge Report has learned that Rush Limbaugh's personal take from the just-approved sale to Jacor will come in close to $30 million, an industry record for on-air talent. Already some wags are guessing where Limbaugh will land on the next Forbes mag list of overall entertainment richies. Higher than his political menace Streisand? [But still looking up at Spielberg....]

Columnist Marilyn Beck, who has just signed to do Ask Marilyn for E! Channel [Disney's new outlet] turns rebellious and investigative on Thursday: "The Oscar Touch: You keep hearing how an Oscar helps the box office of a movie. Well, that's certainly not the case this year ... Shine - which earned Geoffrey Rush the Best Actor Oscar - averaged only $870 per screen [during the week following the broadcast]. How bad is that, really? It's awful. If you take an average ticket price of $5, figure there are four showings of a film a day, you've got about 15 people watching Shine at one time. Ouch!"